A Goody For The Oldtimers


leghome

Maytag "Danged Agitator"
My Mom used to cut chicken, chop eggs and spread mayo on the same cutting board with the same knife &no bleach, but we didn't seem to get food poisoning.
My Mom used to defrost hamburger on the counter AND I used to eat it raw sometimes, too. Our school sandwiches were wrapped in wax paper in a brown paper bag, not in icepack coolers, but I can't remember getting e.coli.
Almost all of us would have rather gone swimming in the lake instead of a pristine pool (talk about boring), no beach closures then.
The term cellphone would have conjured up a phone in a jail cell, and a pager was the school PA system.
We all took gym, not PE... and risked permanent injury with a pair of high top Ked's (only worn in gym)
instead of having cross-training athletic shoes with air cushion soles and built in light reflectors. I can't recall any injuries but they must have happened because they tell us how much safer we are now..
Flunking gym was not an option... even for stupid kids! I guess PE must be much harder than gym.
Speaking of school, we all said prayers and sang the national anthem, and staying in detention after school caught all sorts of negative attention.
We must have had horribly damaged psyches. What an archaic health system we had then. Remember school nurses? Ours wore a hat and everything.
I thought that I was supposed to accomplish something before I was allowed to be proud of myself.
I just can't recall how bored we were without computers, Play Station, Nintendo, X-box or 270 digital TV cable stations.
Oh yeah... and where was the Benadryl & sterilization kit when I got that bee sting? I could have been killed!
We played 'king of the hill' on piles of gravel left on vacant construction sites, and when we got hurt, Mom pulled out the 48-cent bottle of Mercurochrome (kids liked it better because it didn't sting like iodine did) and then we got our butt spanked.
Now it's a trip to the emergency room, followed by a 10-day dose of a $49 bottle of antibiotics, and then Mom calls the attorney to sue the contractor for leaving a horribly vicious pile of gravel where it was such a threat.
We didn't act up at the neighbor's house either because if we did, we got our butt spanked there and then we got butt spanked again when we got home.
I recall Donny Reynolds from next door coming over and doing his tricks on the front stoop, just before he fell off. Little did his Mom know that she could have owned our house. Instead, she picked him up and swatted him for being such a goof. It was a neighborhood run amuck.
To top it off, not a single person I knew had ever been told that they were from a dysfunctional family. How could we possibly have known that?
We needed to get into group therapy and anger management classes? We were obviously so duped by so many societal ills, that we didn't even notice that the entire country wasn't taking Prozac! How did we ever survive?

LOVE TO ALL OF US WHO SHARED THIS ERA,
AND TO ALL WHO DIDN'T-
SORRY FORWHAT YOU MISSED.
I WOULDN'T TRADE IT FOR ANYTHING!
 
WHAT A DIFFERENCE 30 YEARS MAKES…..

1976: Long hair
2006: Longing for hair

1976: KEG
2006: EKG

1976: Acid rock
2006: Acid reflux

1976: Moving to California because it's cool
2006: Moving to California because it's warm

1976: Trying to look like Marlon Brando or Liz Taylor
2006: Trying NOT to look like Marlon Brando or Liz Taylor

1976: Seeds and stems
2006: Roughage

1976: Hoping for a BMW
2006: Hoping for a BM

1976: The Grateful Dead
2006: Dr. Kevorkian

1976: Going to a new, hip joint
2006: Receiving a new hip joint

1976: Rolling Stones
2006: Kidney Stones

1976: Being called into the principal's office
2006: Calling the principal's office

1976: Screw the system
2006: Upgrade the system

1976: Disco
2006: Costco

1976: Parents begging you to get your haircut
2006: Children begging you to get their heads shaved

1976: Passing the drivers' test
2006: Passing the vision test

1976: Whatever
2006: Depends
 
So true so true. Yet idiots called PSYCHOlogists will say our children are better off now. Look at a newspaper, yeah right.
 
Railphotog said:
1976: Parents begging you to get your haircut
2006: Children begging you to get their heads shaved
Got that wrong, remeber this "Emo" thing thats going around... Should be :
2006: Teenage Son looks like a girl, two daughters was enough...

:p
 
And don't forget the mercury we held with bare hands and played with in science class. The raw sodium we made flash fluid with (with the teachers blessing). And of course asbestos blanket we practiced rolling in to put out any fires the bunsen burner might have ignited, while doing many other unsafe things.

I even road in cars without seat belts and even standing up. Wearing a helmet for a bicycle, skate board, or roller skates would have been laughed at.

No, we are developing a whole society that refuses to take responsiblity for their own actions and thinks everyone else should be responsible for their safety. The safer we make things the more careless people get.
 
...and riding in the back of Dad's pickup during a summer evening's drive in the country.

...building a tree house 15 feet in the air out of scrap lumber and bent nails given to us by helpuful carpenters at near-by building sites.

...having sudden stops on our bicycles because our pant leg got caught in the chain sprocket - no chain guard.

...stealing carrots from a neighbors garden and eating them after wiping them off on our shirt or pants.

...getting hurt while playing sports and told to shake it off and get back in there.

or the biggy...............get your butt outside and play. It's good for you!
 



Back
Top